Senate committee drills education officials on Common Core

Friday

Aug 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Natasha LindstromStaff Writer

HARRISBURG — The Senate Education Committee drilled the state education chief Thursday on the costs and controversies related to new academic guidelines and testing based on the national standards known as the Common Core.

“I’m not arguing the standards,” Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19, of Chester County said. “I’m arguing the unfairness of the system and our rush to put in required tests that have the potential of giving a stamp of failure.”

Lawmakers made it clear that nearly everyone can agree on the concept of “raising the bar,” but questioned whether local schools are equipped with the funding and support they need to reach it.

“We’re not asking districts to do more than we’ve ever asked before — it’s the same number of assessments. What we’ve done is change the content and the rigor,” Department of Education Acting Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq said. “In those assessments, the state has recognized the fact that we need to produce better graduates so that we can save the cost of remediation in post-secondary learning.”

“But they don’t have any resources,” Dinniman fired back.

Pennsylvania, along with 44 states and the District of Columbia, has agreed to adopt the Common Core State Standards, a framework developed by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The Common Core aims to ensure every state is holding students to the same minimum levels of learning at each grade level, and it sets the stage for assessments that could offer states the chance to compare apples-to-apples test scores for the first time.

The Common Core does not dictate a national curriculum. Standards define the set of skills and level of knowledge students should achieve at each grade level. Curriculum, which is up to local school districts, outlines the lessons and methods teachers will use so students reach those goals.

“Standards by themselves will not raise student achievement,” Dumaresq said. “So you need good instruction, you need good curriculum and you need those things to be aligned: the standards, the curriculum that implements them, the instruction that supports them, and then the assessments that say did you get the alignment correct.”

Pennsylvania has not signed on to any national assessments, but has been using the updated standards to develop the state’s new Keystone Exams. The plan is that starting with the Class of 2017, all high school students will be required to pass subject tests in Algebra I, biology and basic literature in order to graduate. Students who submit religious exemptions would have the option of completing a project-based assessment instead.

“I don’t think we’re ready for prime-time testing at this point in time,” said Dinniman. He questioned whether future employers or colleges would look negatively at a student who took an exemption on the exam, and said he wasn’t sure schools would be better off financially four years from now when the requirement takes effect.

Over the past several months, the Common Core has triggered some interesting political dynamics and unlikely allies, the lawmakers pointed out. The Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children and Pennsylvania Business Council are both staunch supporters of the new standards. Opponents include both those on the far right and far left, along with tea party supporters and some educators. Some critics fear a federal takeover of schools, while others are more concerned about the cost burdens on districts.

On Thursday, committee members demanded concrete figures to determine the costs of implementing the revised standards and assessments. Dumaresq said her staff was not yet ready with that data.

“What I haven’t heard is assurance that this isn’t just another unfunded mandate on school districts,” Sen. Rob Teplitz, D-15, of Dauphin County said.

The cost question is difficult to answer because districts receive different amounts of funding, with some better off than others, and the types of expenses associated with the new standards — professional development for teachers, updated textbooks and remediation programs — are included in district budgets on a regular basis. Dumaresq said it would be unfair, for instance, to characterize all remediation that happens related to the regulations as an “unfunded mandate.”

But the committee insisted on a breakdown of the incremental costs the new standards may be imposing on local schools, especially in cash-strapped districts like Philadelphia, which recently convinced the city to borrow $50 million just to open on time.

“I just want to know what it’s going to cost and who is actually paying for it,” Education Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Folmer, R-48, of Lebanon County said. “I’m going to keep asking that question over and over again.”

Education officials in 34 states have reported challenges in securing resources to implement Common Core standards, and officials in 37 states are having trouble providing enough high-quality professional development to help teachers adapt, according to a survey earlier this month by George Washington University’s Center on Education Policy.

“Finding adequate resources is the main challenge looming over states’ efforts to prepare districts, schools, principals and teachers for the Common Core,” the study’s author, Diane Stark Rentner, said in a statement. “Assessments aligned to the new standards will be ready to administer in 2014-15, but funding problems will likely hamper states’ efforts to make sure that principals and teachers are prepared to help students master the standards.”

School officials throughout Pennsylvania have been working to align curriculum to the more rigorous standards amid the legislative uncertainty. Some have been doing so for two to three years.

The Pennsylvania Board of Education first adopted the national Common Core standards in July 2010, and the state had been working to update Pennsylvania’s education standards since 2007. The state’s latest version, now called PA Core Standards, is a hybrid that combines the national Common Core content with some elements unique to Pennsylvania.

The state’s standards were already fairly strong in math, but are now more rigorous in English language arts, Dumaresq said. One change calls on students to do more nonfiction reading, such as biographies, newspapers and original documents like the U.S. Constitution. There is no mandated reading list.

Michele Jansen, who has twin 13-year-old girls, drove to Harrisburg from Chambersburg to attend Thursday’s hearing. She has visited four school districts in Franklin County to speak with curriculum directors and teachers about their views on Common Core.

“The various levels of understanding on this are interesting,” Jansen said. “People really do not have a full grasp of what this is, and I think it’s very important that we all do understand how this is affecting our schools.”

The guidelines for the standards and assessments are part of a comprehensive set of regulations called Chapter 4.

The state Board of Education still needs to approve the final Chapter 4 regulations at its next meeting, set for Sept. 11 and 12 in Harrisburg. Chapter 4 must then clear the Senate and House education committees and Independent Regulatory Review Commission for final adoption.

“You’ll never get this through committee, you’ll never get it through the Senate if this issue of costs is not cleared up,” Dinniman said. “Until this unfunded mandate thing is solved, you’re not going to go far.”